Brown's trials likely to begin next year

A Cook County judge has told prosecutors and lawyers for two men charged in the Brown's Chicken massacre that he expects the case to go to trial next year.

Judge Vincent Gaughan met with the lawyers in his chambers Wednesday and promised to push pretrial matters along more quickly, according to parties familiar with the discussion. State's attorneys and defense lawyers were told to expect more status dates as the case advances in 2005.

James Degorski and Juan Luna are facing the death penalty in the 1993 slayings of seven workers at the Palatine restaurant. They were charged in 2002 after DNA evidence on a partly eaten dinner left in the garbage at the crime scene helped crack the case.

The long and often contentious police investigation led to a 1997 report by the Better Government Association sharply criticizing the work of detectives in the case. On Wednesday, during a brief status hearing, it was revealed that defense lawyers for Degorski and Luna have subpoenaed the notes from the Better Government Association's report.

The lawyers are widely expected to call into question police work in the case. Gaughan already has determined that the separate juries who will hear the cases against Degorski and Luna would be allowed to hear the statements of another man who allegedly confessed to the crime in 1998.

Among the association's allegations, leveled by an independent panel of law-enforcement experts, were that police made early mistakes and mishandled the crime scene. The report was called "Patent Malarkey: Public Dishonesty and Deception."

A lawyer for the association, Samuel Fifer, attended the hearing. Afterward he said he plans to file a motion next month arguing that the report is available on the Internet, and notes and other materials being sought could be protected under Illinois' shield law.

The push for the information amounts to a fishing expedition for material the defense can use, Fifer said.

"They're trolling," Fifer said.

Also Wednesday, Gaughan set Jan. 31 as the date lawyers can argue about the length of a key deposition in the case. Anne Lockett, Degorski's girlfriend at the time of the slayings who kept her knowledge about the case secret for years, is to be deposed separately by attorneys for the men.